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So, they started on Twitter, but have now become commonplace on most social channels. If you’re not using them, you’re missing out. What you need to know:

A hashtag must be written as a single word, without any spaces.

You can include numbers in a hashtag, but punctuation and special characters (like $ and %) won’t work.

You can search for a hashtag using the search bar at the top of any page within your social channel.

Twitter

Only 140 character so be clever and use them within your tweet.

Try to incorporate as part of a tweet and not just add them to the end with a link. This creates multiple actions for the reader and you may end up discouraging traffic to the link

Instagram

30 hashtags are allowed with any image posted. You can get away with using more hashtags on this channel for follower engagement as there are a lot of bots in operation that search for hashtags to find followers. Just be warned, you might not see the expected engagement using this tactic.

Ensure that the hashtags you use are relevant and your comment is easily readable.

A nice trick is to upload an image with 5-10 hashtags and then add additional hash tags as a comment at a later date.

Check your privacy settings to ensure you are now broadcasting publicly when you don’t want to be.

Most importantly, be clever with hashtags. Do your research using TweetReach or similar to determine if there are users already engaging with a hashtag, rather than attempting to create a conversation on a brand new one.

Travelling through London today I was much more aware of the #Relevant advertising that I passed whilst in the Undergound network. This is where brands are demonstrating their planning by delivering timely, and relevant comms.

‘Special’ Days are a great opportunity for brands to jump on the back of popular topics, as well as have a little fun. Below are a few adverts that I passed today.

Good Job #SwoonEditions and #KewGardens. My winner for the day has to be #LoveApptually!

Confidence creating content is the main issue I come across when discussing social media marketing. This is especially true of smaller companies who don’t have a team to generate content. In my experience, the best place to start is to curate content that is relevant to your audience and share this. Why? Here are my top five reasons:

Take pressure off finding time to create

Enjoy researching interesting and new topics and staying ‘on top of your game’

Scary to think that yesterday was my first trip to London in nearly two years. On the train to London I worried a little that I would alight at Paddington and instantly regret the decision to move back to the West Country. Alas, with a little sigh, this was not the case.

This trip was a pure indulgence to explore an area that I had never quite found time to visit during my four years living in the capital – The East End.

I was inspired by my original desire to attend a First Thursday art tour. However, having never ‘won’ the tickets (a lottery system which is massively over-subscribed to), I decided to create my own walking tour of East End street art.